UCI Medical Center to specialize in stroke help

UCI Medical Center is Southern California’s latest Stroke-Neurology Receiving Center, a designation that makes the hospital a go-to location for patients after suffering a stroke.

Orange County’s Health Care Agency chooses hospitals that are best equipped to provide state of the art stroke care, university officials said. Under the system for stroke patients launched in Orange County, and mimicking similar systems in San Francisco, Santa Clara and New York, paramedics will now take stroke patients to one of six receiving centers with experts on call ready to treat them.

Dr. Steven C. Cramer will spearhead UCI Medical Center’s program.

The county requires all care centers to have a dedicated medical director, emergency-medicine physician on site at all times, and a neurologist, neurosurgeon and radiologist on call.

Stroke is the third-leading cause of death in the United States.

There are up to 8,000 strokes among Orange County residents annually.

— Joseph Serna